


the yellow smile of dawn

by bladeCleaner



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers, Spoilers for finale, do not read if you have not watched all 13 episodes, unfortunately jimmy and brian were not getting it on in the woods. sorry guys.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:23:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He places a flower crown over her head and she takes him out for macaroni and cheese. She likes picking crime scenes apart and he falls asleep dreaming about stags. Both of them have killed people without hesitating.</p><p>The one thing about working in the FBI is that nobody can call 'em <em>boring</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the yellow smile of dawn

She recognizes him first. They’re almost within arm’s distance. 

 

 

There’s petals falling into the golden grass of the field.

“You’d think we’d get tired of fields,” she feels like saying, but doesn’t. 

It’s always the same stage set. A field. A beautiful day, buttered in slabs of yellow sunshine as the entire field rustles collectively. All of them standing in parkas, their guns burning hot in their holsters and the blood searing into their brains like they were the ones splattered or dissected or buried. It’s an old play that’s already dry on her tongue; the three of them snap on the green-mint gloves and get to work. There’s always more nails to scrape under, more scans to perform and more blurry security-camera pictures to scrutinize pixel-by-pixel. 

Will was the first thing that made all of it so incredibly out-of-step. He raises his hands and the curtain falls; they disappear. He resolves the plot, reveals the magician’s trick while they stand in the background. 

But right now there’s no dead corpse planted between them. Sometimes she dreams about them, gory throats exposed like blooming poppies. Her little sister’s Science project gone wrong; a volcano that corroded before it reached school.

Sometimes when it gets too much, she bucks down to the shooting range or obsessively plays the violin until the neighbours complain.

Sometimes she takes walks. 

Looks like he takes walks too.

He plucks something out of the field. They walk toward each other slowly. He thinks of two spinning tops rotating on a table; destined to crash together, or fall off the edge before they clash.

He puts the flower crown on her head. She blinks once, watching the petals fall over her eyes. The wind sweeps through again, sending a cascade of peach and pink petals falling over her vision. Wisps of hair fly out of place before settling in vaguely aesthetic configurations around her face.

_This is my design._

“Hello,” he says.

\--

She spots him at a table at a coffee shop. 

He suddenly registers the clatter of her pulling the chair back, nursing a hot cup in her hands. It’s Sunday morning and they’re both blurred in the morning light.

He opens his eyes slowly.

“Mornin’.” She says, chipper but not too loud. 

“Ah-morning, Agent Katz.”

Her eyes grimace. “Jack isn’t around. You can call me Beverly, or Bev, I won’t bite.”

He whispers under his breath, “He might.”

She grins at that, cheeky and bold. “True.”

\--

“Do I seem different?”

“You’re a little different. But then, you’ve always been a little different.

Brilliant strategy-that way no one knows if something’s up with you.”

“How would I know if something’s up with you?”

“You wouldn’t. But I would tell you, if you asked.

Return the favour?”

\--

He sees her smoking down by the lake. He’s decked out in his fishing gear and he freezes when he sees her, like she’s about to grow antlers. 

But she stays the same-real. 

The first thing he thinks before everything else, when he sees her- is _Oh-there you are, I’ve been looking for you._  

Her shoes-practical, black, comfortable-are neatly placed next to her. He sets down his supplies and goes to sit next to her. She’s unravelled, like this, and it feels off-balance to him. It’s always Beverly catching him off his feet, surprising him by treating him like he’s someone, not someones.

Her toes are barely grazing the crystalline surface of the water. 

He sits next to her, the wood creaking slightly. “Mind telling me what’s going on with you?”

Her mouth quirks upwards. “And here I was thinking I was immune to your sight.”

He laughs a little bitterly. “Doesn’t take a pure empath to notice you didn’t come in to work. And I didn’t know you smoked.”

She exhales again. “I don’t.”

“Calling in that favour now,” he hears himself say. He’s not used to pushing, but this is just hypocritical. 

She looks at him then, her eyes black and wide. 

She sighs and says, “Remember how I said I was the eldest kid in the family?”

He nods slowly, his chest seizing up.

“Emphasis on _was_. It’s been five years since my sister and brother died.”

His mouth dries up.

He blinks a few times and parts his lips.

“You don’t have to say anything, Will.”

He realizes that he really doesn’t, that she’s the first person in a long while who hasn’t expected anything of him except maybe to listen, to truly be a friend, nothing more.

He takes his hat off, puts it in his lap and leans on her shoulder. She tenses a bit, surprised, but places her head next to his too. It’s a cold and overcast day.

\--

“Why did you call me? Why not Jack, why not the police?"

“I called you because I’m entirely sure what I saw was real.”

“Then let’s prove it.”

\--

She slams the papers down one late night. 

Everybody’s gone home except for her, Jack and Will. The Chesapeake Ripper’s been silent for a few days-the trail’s gone cold, but she knows how important Lasse was to Jack. 

She’s packing it in for the night, though-she’s starving, the night’s gotten as cold as the corpse-boxes in their office and she’s tired of staring at pictures of intestines.

She grabs her stuff, goes down the hall and does a double-take.

Will’s slumped up against a wall, his head limp.

She immediately checks his pulse and breathing. Ah. He’s sleeping. Figures.

She gently nudges him awake.

His eyes jump open and he panics, his arms flailing, his legs scrambling-

She holds him down and says, “Will-Will, look at me-”

He struggles a bit more. 

“Will, _look at me_.”

His eyes look so full.

“I’ve _got you._ No matter what, okay? I’ve got you.”

He nods slowly and re-adjusts his glasses, taking some time to breathe. After he calms down a bit, she slides down to sit next to him. She’s still got her hand on his shoulder.

He rubs at his eyes and says, “Sorry.”

“No need to apologize.” She gets up, dusts off her knees and reaches out her hand to pull him up. “C’mon, let’s go get dinner. You look awful."

He raises his eyebrows, looks at her hand. Blinks and takes it. She pulls him up and it’s almost too natural how comfortable he is around her space. How okay he is whenever she tugs and he follows. It's discomfiting, because it isn't. He wants to mentally slap his neuroses into check.

Every time he follows, though, she surprises him.

“You brought me to a macaroni and cheese place.”

It’s both a question and a statement.

“Too understated for your taste?”

“No, no-it’s just…unexpected.”

“Considering what we do, I would be surprised if we didn’t all have our inane comforts. Kid or adult size? Either portion's really filling.”

The restaurant is thankfully not a restaurant solely for children, but he feels conspicuous anyway. He feels like a splash of macabre amongst all this cheeriness and his instinct is to just back away. 

She looks at him intuitively and picks a booth away from the families, the crowds-in the corner, backed up against a classy mint wall. She sits almost flush against the glass. He doesn’t turn to look at the window, because he won’t register his reflection.

“Two adult plates of Mac ‘n’ Cheese, Mark,” she says, handing back the menus. 

“Got it, gorgeous,” the gangly waiter winks. She notes with derisive amusement that Mark is giving Will the hairy eyeball, but he hasn’t registered it at all.

She orders beer to go with it. She laughs when he asks, all innocent doe-like, “Beer with macaroni and cheese?”

“Did you want apple juice?”

He flushes a little. It’s really cute. She shouldn’t find it really cute. But it is.

“I just believe that some things are sacred,” he insists.

She leans back a little. “You like traditions? Who’d’ve guessed?”

It’s almost too easy for him to get offended, but he doesn’t bite. He just blows out a breath tiredly and says, “Nobody.”

Their plates arrive and she picks up her fork.

“Then I’ll have to get better at guessing,” she says, grinning. 

It’s delicious, and he notes later that she sends away the beer for two cups of apple juice. 

\--

They talk a lot that night. Later on, she’ll remember it as a vague haze-a night of getting to know Will Graham beyond all the mass murders and the weird way he can get inside minds. 

He’ll remember everything precisely, but this conversation in particular:

“What did you do to the person who stabbed you with a pencil in the third grade?”

She chews and swallows. _Mmm._ “What makes you think I did anything to him?”

He says, “You shot that woman the other day while she was nuzzling a boy with a gun. You don’t strike me as the type to have mercy.”

She puts her fork down then.

"Don't mince words, do you?"

He doesn’t look at her eyes and mumbles an apology.

“S’fine.”

“I’ll stop mentioning work, it’s-unappetizing-” 

“No, it’s fine.You don’t have to feel like we can’t talk about our jobs. But we’re more than our jobs.”

He laughs a little too darkly. “Are we?"

“We study serial killers. We go home with the memory of their faces, how they killed, trying to puzzle out who they are. But we’re still us. Even you. For instance-”

She swivels around apple juice in her glass. “Are you thinking about killing me right now?”

He gapes, then shakes his head no, then says stubbornly, "I could be.”

"But you won't do it." She shrugs. “It’s our choices-every single one-that make us who we are.”

\--

“Oh-and I beat the kid up. When they told my mother I had to apologize, she swore, laughed then told me to say sorry for keeping his pencil.” 

What comes after that is a genuine laugh. The sheer happiness of it, so uncommon from him, surprises her. He looks a little shocked himself, and a disbelieving smile curls around her lips. The sound is lovely.

“I like your mother.”

“ _Right?_ ”

\--

In a way she's just-

He likes her. It's an undeniable fact. He likes the way she treats him like he's another normal human being, he likes the way her smile looks as she leans against a door and tells him he's being too quiet again, he likes the way her eyes crinkle, he likes that she's always wanted to try being a roller-skating waitress in a 1950's movie, he likes the way she reaches into his space like there's nothing to be afraid of and somehow, knows what he needs. Silence and substance in equal balance. She's so real and here and close.

 

But she doesn’t-doesn’t know-

\--

“-that Jack pushed you right to the edge, and now you’re pushing yourself over.”

_I see you._

\--

She’ll recall almost saying something to him after he told her he felt relatively sane. She didn’t. And now here they are. Here. They. Are.

\--

“I can’t pretend I don’t know you.”

_but maybe I didn’t at all._

\--

Things begin to break once they file past each other. He’s in handcuffs and she’s screaming at herself not to talk to him, not to look, but they catch each other’s eyes. 

What passes between them is something ugly, dying, screeching, all the times between them groaning in agony. Those three seconds are incomparably painful, a thousand pencils in a thousand hands, over and over, repeatedly. The words are dead.

After that everything feels filthy on her hands, seeping through her gloves. The three of them don’t say a word to each other, not even Brian: this feels wrong, an invasion of privacy, their boots moving through Will’s house. She finds his lecture notes and looks through his underwear drawer. She’s seen so many things, but this seems too horrible: Will Graham’s colleagues ransacking his house.  

She never knew how many dogs he had. Now she knows their names, ages, breeds, has to wonder whether he fed them the bodies.

They all smoke afterward until Brian throws his cigarette into the woods and starts swearing and cursing. He storms off after she won’t say anything. Jimmy follows him quietlyand they both show up at the car, looking distinctly calmer but no less happy.

When they go back to the office Jack hands them a file an inch thick, rubbing the bridge of his nose. The three of them struck by the starkness of it under the hanging bulb, lying on the steel table. The name **WILL GRAHAM** on it has as much of a sobering effect as a tongue tied around a neck.

\-- 

Scraping blood from under his nails feels like stabbing something beautiful, over and over again, in the heart.

\--

Dawn in the fields, again, and they’re painted gold.

“Were we really friends, all this time? Or were you just hiding who you really were?”

He smiles sadly.

“I am who I’ve always been. You’re the only one who’s seen all along.”

“Can we stop? With the mind games?”

“What did you say to me, that night?”

She swallows.

“What did you say?”

“I’ve got you,” she repeats hoarsely. “I’ve got you no matter what.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as I procrastinated on all my homework right before a test! 
> 
> As always, this will be my OTP forever. I really, REALLY like their interactions, I hope I captured them appropriately here, and IC. Comments and critique appreciated!


End file.
